


Anonymous

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-05
Updated: 2011-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's probably a reason why, in the most decadent place in the Universe, Avon is eating an ice cream sundae...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anonymous

_Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine  
When you gonna let me get sober?  
Let me alone, let me go home.  
Let me go back and start over._

 **1**  
At first Vila tapped on the door diffidently, and whispered, then moved briskly along the continuum to pounding on the door and howling. "Avon, I really want a drink, I REALLY want one."

Avon, hauled from the clasp of a very intense dream, eventually got to the door of his cabin, his dressing gown ruched but secure. "Who doesn't? All right then, come in," he said.

Vila prowled the cabin until he sat down on the heap of tumbled sheets. "I've got to have a drink."

"No you don't," Avon said. "And in fact, you're not going to have one. Today. You just want one."

"What if I go into a fit?"

"I don't think you're anywhere near to hobnailing your liver to that extent. But if you do, Cally and Orac will whip up some potion or other for delirium tremens."

Avon took a pair of trousers from the cupboard, slipped them on underneath the dressing gown, hung up the dressing gown, and pulled a knit shirt over his head. It rumpled his hair but he didn't do anything about it but run a hand through it, which if anything exacerbated the situation. "Look in the second drawer on the left, there's a packet of biscuits. Have a couple."

Vila gazed at the pictures on the packet. "I don't like any of these sorts."

"I'm not running a restaurant. You'll feel marginally better after you eat something. There's a flask of tea on the desk. Have a cup and pour me one too--go into the bathroom and get the toothmug."

 **PROLOGUE (After Countdown)**  
"Nice job you did on that bomb," Vila said. "Where'd you learn to do that? I mean, I don't usually think of embezzlers as being dab hands with ordnance."

"Here and there," Avon said.

"A typical Avon answer, except you didn't say 'Here and there, you idiot.' I didn't much appreciate Blake keeping me stuck down there."

"Don't blame me, as you recall I was otherwise engaged at the time."

"Are you going to tell me what that bloke Grant has against you?"

"Presumably he hasn't got it any more. Amity has been restored. You saw that touching manly handshake he bestowed on me."

"Are you going to tell me what he HAD against you?"

"I'll gratify your desire for predictability. No, I won't, you idiot."

"S'alright," Vila said. "Grant told me."

"He could never keep his fucking mouth shut when he was drunk."

"He says he doesn't drink any more."

"Small world, large program."

"He told me that in our line of work, drinking isn't quite the thing."

"Even you could have figured that out without instruction from the great Del Grant."

 **2**  
"I think I'd better cut down," Vila said. "It used to make it easier for me to get along, but now it's making it harder. If anything could."

"If you're a drunk," Avon said, "then you're just deluding yourself about cutting down. You have to admit that you can't drink, and you have to not drink. That's all there is to it."

"Yes, but how do you?"

"Distraction. Fear. Will. Amusement. Love. Revenge. It needn't be the same every day."

"You sound like you know a bit about it."

"Didn't you think that we had something in common? Something that the others don't?"

"Well, we're the only two that nick things. And the only two that make jokes deliberately."

"And the only two drunks."

"Oh, I've seen Gan put it away. Blake too."

"And I've seen them keep a pint of bitter going for four hours,  
and do that three days in a row running. Well, I couldn't, and you couldn't either."

"I can stop any time."

"But you haven't. Well, I can't stop any time. All I can say is that I haven't had a drink for three years, nine months, and fifteen days. And I don't plan to have one today."

 **3**  
"What's that green thing there?"

"It's the lead for the cable that steps down the voltage. You can see, there's a bit of corrosion on it. Go ahead, grind off the corrosion with the side of the laser probe. Then connect it."

"How many of them are there?"

"Forty-nine."

"Christ. We'll be here for ages. Talk to me, that's one thing I miss from drinking. Going down to the pub and having a laugh with my mates. This in't much of a pub, you're not much of a mate, this in't much of a laugh, but..."

"What's the worst thing you did when you were drunk?"

"Pissed in the punchbowl at my sister Kriena's wedding, it was just standing on a tray out in the hall, waiting to be brought in."

Avon laughed. "Did anybody find out?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well," Avon said. "The worst thing I did when I was drunk, was much worse than that. Much worse. You are a comparative amateur. Does that make you feel any better?"

 **4**  
In a crew that small, it was common for Vila and Avon to share night watches. With the others asleep, sometimes it seemed that they were the only people on the ship, or the Universe, drifting quietly, hoping not to be informed of anything perilous. Sitting on the sofa in the flight deck. Very conscious of the proximity of the liquor cabinet.

"What started you off?" Vila asked, pouring out another cup of tea. After a shared night watch, there was always a nest of mugs, and at least three ash trays, to clear up.

"With adolescence, I developed a certain degree of interest in getting my end away. But I was also so shy that I couldn't stand the thought of anyone looking at me. One objective certainly impaired the other. But when I was drunk, I quite liked to be looked at. And when you spend the night hanging about in a bar, and no one picks you up, at least you can get drunk."

"Just the opposite for me, really. Everyone just looks straight through me. It's like drinking fills me up, so I'm not transparent any more, like I'm really there. Or like frosting the outside. Brewer's droop, though?"

"Fortunately, not. By the time I was drinking enough for that to be a real threat, I decided I liked intoxication at least as well as orgasm."

"Blokes or birds, in those bars? I've always wondered about you, you know."

"Depended on what I was drinking, and how much. In terms of strict preference, about half and half I suppose. In terms of opportunities, usually men. But, you know, there comes a point when you don't really notice who you went home with and what you did there. Or at least it comes as a surprise when you wake up the next morning. Pleasant or unpleasant, as fortune provides."

"Oh, no, I never," Vila said, genuinely shocked. "Mind, I was usually getting trollied with my mates, and we were only hanging about in a pack because we didn't **have** any girls, if we had any we'd rather spend the money on pouring Babycham into them than cider into us."

{{If I'd done that sort of thing, it'd be the worst thing I ever did when I was drunk}}, he thought. {{And Avon did something **worse** than that? Dropping those hints, like that Arabian Nights bird. Not sure I'd really like to know about it.}}

"How'd you meet Grant? His sister, did she drink too?"

"Anna? Not very much. I knew Grant simply because we tended to end up in the same after-hours places when the bars closed. I met Anna when she was trying to find him when he'd been on a three-day drunk. His friends were worried."

"You and him--did you ever?" Now that would be just like Avon, Vila thought. The brother and the sister both.

"Not that I know of, but for all I know I might."

 **5**  
"They'll notice," Vila said. "The others. And either they'll take the mickey, which I can't stand, or they'll be all over sympathetic. Which I can't stand."

"No they won't. They wouldn't notice if the entire Federation high command staged a kick line in can-can costumes on the flight deck sofa. Once you establish a persona, it takes far more perception than they can muster to see any variations. No, you're a lush and I despise the recreations of the common herd. Just ask any of them. And you know for a fact, they can't tell the difference between your drunk act and when you really are drunk."

"Drunk act!"

"Odd, isn't it, when there's something you don't want to do--well, less than usual--how someone manages to spy you hoisting one, or trying to cover up a stagger, or slurring a word here and there? And sooner or later someone gets frustrated and tells you to go sleep it off, they'll do it themselves."

"What I'd call odd is that whenever anybody round here doesn't want to do something, they just wait around for you to demand an opportunity to score off them by doing it better than they could? I mean, everything that's loose just falls down and rolls onto you. Far as I'm concerned, that makes me smart and you a right charlie."

 **6 (During Gambit)**

{{It's bloody lucky that I like ice cream}}, Avon thought. {{Otherwise it might bother me to be in the most decadent place in the universe, eating an ice cream, and not calling up the rarest bottles in the cellar. Which I could easily afford, with five million credits (minus Vila's commission)}}.

When Vila reeled out, Avon's first thought was oh hell, now he'll have to start over again with just one day of sobriety. His second thought was, serves him right for falling off the wagon. The next set of thoughts involved the likelihood of Vila's imminent incineration, whether that sort of thing was likely to be catching, and if not whether it would be difficult to establish his inheritance rights.

Avon found the next minute or so, transmitting speed chess moves, intensely enjoyable. Almost intoxicating.

 **7**  
"This isn't half boring," Vila said, looking up from the screen where he had downloaded the Big Book.

"Keep reading. It's better for you to be bored than drunk."

"I can't be doing with all this Higher Power stuff. It sounds phony to me."

"It doesn't have to be anything very grand. It could just be wanting to stay sober, and you've admitted that there are good enough reasons for that."

"Do you believe in God?"

"Oh, yes, I'm afraid I do. Just look around you--not just here, but all of the history of all the worlds. How could that concatenation of idiocy and futility and pain be accidental? There must be a design for it."

 **8**  
Somehow or other Vila managed, during his work shifts. After all, when they thought he was drinking, they looked askance about his getting his hands around a glowing green beaker during work hours anyway, or close enough beforehand to affect his reactions.

The sleep shifts had always been the worst. He didn't usually drink enough to pass out, whatever anyone might have thought, but he did usually take enough to polish the sharp edges.

There were many times when Avon thoroughly rued telling Vila to come and get him, whenever Vila really needed him.

Vila had every sort of reservation in the world about being in a room alone with someone who, by his own confession, wasn't the bloke to turn your back on. Especially if you'd just dropped the soap.

Avon was inconvenienced by discovering that, when he was sober, he really couldn't bear to touch anyone he didn't love.

So it really was funny that there were so many nights when Vila managed a little bit of sleep, in the circle of Avon's arms, and a tangle of sheets that looked like they had been beaten into meringue with an egg whisk. They both would have thought it was a laugh. If they had allowed themselves to think about it.

 **9**  
Night watch again. Objects maddeningly appearing on screen and ghosting off. They could be hostiles with excellent shielding technology. There might be something wrong with the detectors anyway. Two of the more comforting thoughts that could be held and cherished and polished by two men, both sober and one of them doubting whether connection with reality was all it was cracked up to be.

"Doesn't seem to be any point to it," Vila said. "We're not going to win, we were never going to win, the turning of the fucking tide just means we're drowning faster. I mean, all we've got to hope for now is that when we get killed it doesn't hurt too much for too long. Why do I have to be sober for that?"

"Perhaps you owe it to yourself," Avon said. "It may be a mercy, albeit a severe one, to be able to see it coming and die on your feet."

"Not one of your better arguments. What's it matter, though? Nothing gets through to you. But if you don't care about anything, why do you care about being sober?"

"I feel a sense of obligation to my Higher Power."

"What's it matter to God whether you have a drink or not? I mean, you could argue it's His fault there's booze about anyway, or that He's the one that made you a lush."

"Oh, but my Higher Power is something else." It took a minute or two for Avon to gather the nerve to continue. "Perhaps you remember, Grant was willing to postpone killing me, but he didn't look entirely satisfied with the account I gave him. Well, so he shouldn't have. It wasn't, shall we say, entirely the truth. I told him that I allowed Anna to be arrested because I had been shot, and I was unconscious for thirty hours. I said 'some people found me'-and of course that's feeble, but in all this time I've never been able to come up with a better story. As to what actually happened..."

Avon stopped, went to the galley to fix himself another cup of tea, and returned.

"Of course the essence of lying successfully is to include the highest possible percentage of truth. So I told Grant that the man selling the visas increased his demands impossibly, I couldn't pay him, the police were closing in, we had to get away. Grant told me I should have killed the bastard, and I told him I did. And that was true. And after I killed him, I went to the first place where I could drink, and I drank myself into a blackout and I haven't the slightest idea of where I was and what I did for the next thirty hours. So you asked me about my first drink--one of those was my last one.

And during the blackout, the police found her, and something gave them the idea that it was a political job. So after I had become a murderer, then the woman that I loved--that I love, still--entered the process of being tortured to death because I failed her. So that's my Higher Power. Anna's death."

 **10 (Before Star One)**

After they found Docholli, well, you might say that there was a bit of an atmosphere on the ship. There was a universal sense that everything was coming to an end, disastrously, but you couldn't even garner a plurality vote on just what the disaster would be and when it would come.

Although it didn't work at all, you couldn't blame Blake for trying: finding a couple of bottles of champagne somewhere, putting them on ice, calling a crew meeting.

"How delightful," Avon said. "And you wish us to celebrate the holocaust we are about to perform? Count me out, Blake," he said, turning his back on the assembled group and the wine bucket. {{Oh Christ}}, he thought. {{And champagne is Vila's favorite drink, well it would be, wouldn't it? His idea of a bit of class enlivening his sorry little existence}}.

"Vila, what are you doing here?" he said with what he considered nicely judged harshness. "Now get out of here and finish that relay set, it's just like you to skive off in here instead of doing your work."

Vila stared back at him. {{Oh, what's the point?}} he thought. {{It's down to days or hours now, if anyone manages to scrape through it won't be me, considering my luck.}} "Sod off, Avon. You've always been so proud of having four million more days than I have, well now you can have them all to yourself."

He bustled toward the table where the glasses were arrayed. "Ta, Blake. I love champagne--best thing in the world, if you can get it, isn't it? Pity we don't have the right kind of glasses, but it tastes good out of a tumbler too."

 **11**  
After Vila got back to the Liberator, there was a lot of repair work to be done. Fortunately, however, the liquor cabinet had survived intact, and after a few abortive attempts, Cally gave over trying to keep him out of it. And later on, there was often a place to buy a bottle, and Dorian had laid down wine...

 **12 (After Rumours)**  
"Corpse reviver?" asked Vila, who was already a few drinks ahead.

"Why not?" Avon said, not saying "Thank you," but Vila didn't mind because the gratitude, for once, was visible on Avon's face.

"Everyone has to believe in something," he told Vila. "I believe I'll have another drink."


End file.
